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5/03/2015

Hot Docs Review: 'The Messenger'

The Messenger

(Canada/France,
93 min.)

Dir.
Su Rynard

Programme:
Canadian Spectrum (World Premiere)

Birds of a feather flock together in Su Rynard’s flighty doc eco doc
The Messenger. Fans of winged
creatures will be a-twitter with this affectionate look at songbirds and the
harmony they create worldwide. The Messenger assembles a gaggle of bird
lovers and ornithologists who explain the alarming rate at which songbirds are
on the decline.

A York University biology
professor, for example, charts one songbird's migration to Brazil and back in
one season, and explores how far a single bird travels while bringing its
cheerful tune around the world. The
Messenger looks beyond the birds and extends to a greater argument about
climate change as the migration patterns of birds struggle to adapt to the
fluctuating weather. Bird populations dwindle as birds arrive on their usual
schedule to find unseasonably cool temperatures in which they freeze to death, or
they come home at the usual time to find an early spring and depleted food supplies.
The case study of the songbirds situates climate change within a complex and
fragile ecosystem in which creatures great and small have both a role and a stake.

The film also offers practical
advice with which birdwatchers may assist their feathered friends. The Messenger shows the surprising
amount of bird that crash into windows and die, but the advice to avoid excess
lighting and to mount a few decals on window panes are fair solutions that
anyone may put into practice when they leave the theatre.

The Messenger leaves one wanting to do
more for the songbirds since Rynard and company highlight the simple pleasure
in spotting a dash of colour in the trees or hearing a soothing birdsong in the
morning. The film’s a visual wonder, too, as Rynard presents isolated shots of birds
in flight, flapping their wings in sumptuous slow motion cinematography.

While the film makes a great case
for birds, cat people (i.e. me) might take issue with one hilariously heavy-handed
sequence that wags its finger at little kitties for hunting the songbirds that
flutter into backyards across the county. The rhetoric used by the talking
heads in this sequence is a little rich, since The Messenger ignores other predators in the food chain to shame
cats and their owners. (The first time my cat brought a bird to the doorstep as
a present remains a legitimately fond memory.) This episode of The Messenger feels strangely out of
place as images of cats snatching birds and munching on them are treated like a
gangland shooting presented on FOX news.

Inconsistencies aside, The Messenger soars as a nature
documentary as Rynard and her trio of cinematographers capture the airborne
animals in all their beauty.